Sociology of Families, Historical Context, and Union Formation

Vocabulary-style flashcards covering concepts, sociological theories, historical trends, and union formation principles from Chapters 1, 2, and 3.

Families (Sociological Concept)

A term preferred by sociologists over 'family' because it is more inclusive and diverse, encompassing an individual's family of origin as well as created families such as friends, coworkers, and teammates.

Living Apart Together (LAT)

A relationship arrangement in which two people consider themselves a couple but reside in separate households.

Transnational Families

Families where immediate or extended family members live in different countries.

Open Adoption

An adoption arrangement involving ongoing contact between the biological family and the adoptive family.

Closed Adoption

An adoption arrangement where there is no contact between the biological family and the adoptive family.

Skip Generation Families

Families in which children are raised by grandparents without parents present, often headed by senior women due to traditional caregiving roles.

Adopted Embryos

Unused embryos left over from another person's reproductive treatment that are given to someone else to help them achieve pregnancy.

Co-parenting Agreements

Signed documents between separated or split parents outlining how they will share time, responsibilities, and decisions for their child.

Serial Monogamy

A pattern of intimate relationships involving a sequence of different exclusive partners over time, with only one partner at a time.

Family-Process Definitions

Definitions of family that include all family types by focusing on actions, interactions, dynamic relationships, and the goal of caring for members rather than static structures.

Social Reproduction

The ongoing physical, mental, and emotional care and maintenance required to sustain family members and human life.

Kin-Keeper

The person in a family—usually a woman—who performs work to keep family members connected, such as maintaining communication or organizing gatherings.

Sociological Imagination

A perspective illustrating how private individual experiences and problems reflect broader public issues, historical inequalities, and social trends.

Kinship Group

A social group of people sharing relationships typically through blood or marriage who may hold positions in a hierarchy of rights over property.

Matrilineal Kinship System

A kinship system where lineage, descent, and property rights are traced through the female line.

Patrilineal Kinship System

A kinship system where lineage, descent, and property rights are traced through the male line.

Bilateral Kinship System

A kinship system where lineage and family ties are traced through both male and female lines.

George Murdoch's Definition of Family

An early, non-inclusive definition centered on the heterosexual nuclear family, defined by co-residence, economic cooperation, and monogamy.

Census Family

A Statistics Canada definition comprising a married or common-law couple with or without children, or a lone parent living with at least one child aged 24 or younger in the same home.

Expressive Role

In structural functionalism, the family role centered on nurturing and socializing children, traditionally performed by women.

Instrumental Role

In structural functionalism, the family role centered on economic support and practical leadership, traditionally performed by men.

Public Sphere

In conflict theory, the domain of wage labor, factories, and formal employment separated from family life during industrialization.

Private Sphere

In conflict theory, the domestic domain of home and family life that became separated from formal waged work during industrialization.

Worker Alienation

Karl Marx's concept describing how industrial workers lack control over production, perform repetitive work, lose creativity, and become isolated from one another.

Meg Luxton

A Canadian sociologist who studied three generations of housewives in a Manitoba mining town, demonstrating how women's unpaid domestic labor supports capitalism.

Second Shift

Arlie Hochschild's term for the disproportionate unpaid housework and caregiving women complete at home following their paid employment.

Discourse

In postmodernist theory, the way knowledge and information are constructed, communicated, and legitimized by those holding social power.

Deconstruction

A postmodernist analytical approach that questions existing assumptions, ideas, and whose knowledge is granted authority.

Linked Lives

A core principle of life course theory stating that events or transitions in one person's life affect the entire family network.

Gemeinschaft

A term describing preindustrial rural life where people share common values, know everyone else in the community, and conduct work and family in the same space.

Mechanization of Housework

The introduction of 20th-century labor-saving household technology (such as fridges and washing machines) that transformed domestic work and expectations of women.

Chinese Exclusion Act

Historical Canadian immigration policy that targeted Chinese individuals, restricting entry and disrupting family unity.

Métis People

A distinct group arising from historic marriages and relationships between European fur traders and First Nations or Inuit women.

Indian Act

Canadian legislation that deeply impacted Indigenous communities by disrupting traditional governance, denying Indian status, and facilitating forced assimilation.

Sixties Scoop

The historical practice in Canada of removing Indigenous children from their families and communities to be raised in white foster or adoptive families.

Cultural Convergence

The process by which modernization, industrialization, and urbanization alter traditional family norms toward similar global patterns.

Pronatalist Policy

Government policies designed to encourage higher birth rates and influence citizens to have more children.

Below-Replacement Fertility

A demographic condition where birth rates fall below the level needed to replace individuals who retire or die.

Liberal Welfare Regimes

State welfare systems with strict rules and modest benefits that rely on market solutions (like private services) for social problems.

Conservative Welfare Regimes

State welfare systems that expect families and charities to provide primary care, with the government stepping in only when family care fails.

Social Democratic Regimes

State welfare systems providing generous, universal benefits funded by high taxes, integrating care costs directly into public services.

Divorce Act (1968; 1985)

Canadian federal legislation governing formal marriage dissolution, shifting legal requirements over time.

Looking-Glass Self Theory

The concept that self-perception and behavioral adjustments depend on how an individual believes others perceive them ('how I think you think about me').

Complementary Needs Theory

Robert Winch's 1962 theory proposing that individuals choose partners with opposite, complementary personality traits to fill missing pieces in themselves.

Exchange Theory

A perspective viewing marriage as a give-and-take relationship where partners exchange resources of equal value.

Expressive Exchange

In exchange theory, a mutual exchange of affection, care, and emotional support between partners.

Instrumental Exchange

In exchange theory, an exchange involving tangible, material, or financial support between partners.

Evolutionary Theory of Partner Selection

A theory proposing that mate selection is guided by survival traits: men seek fertile women, while women seek men with long-term socio-economic advantages.

Social Role Theory

The view that individuals choose partners who best personify ideal traditional or cultural characteristics of their gender.

Erotic Capital

The value assigned to an individual based on sexual attractiveness, beauty, charm, social presentation, and sexual expertise.

Halo Effect

A cognitive bias in which physically attractive individuals are judged and treated more positively than less attractive individuals.

Beauty Premium

The economic outcome where attractive individuals are perceived as harder workers and earn higher wages in the job market.

Endogamy

The practice of marrying within one's own social, cultural, ethnic, or religious group.

Exogamy

The practice of marrying outside one's own social, cultural, or ethnic group (intermarriage).

Sexual Double Standard

A social standard that rewards men for high levels of sexual activity while criticizing or shaming women for identical behavior.

Sexual Scripts

Cultural guidelines and expectations specifying appropriate dating and sexual attitudes or behaviors for specific genders.

Homogamy

The sociological principle (rooted in homophily) asserting that people tend to choose romantic partners who are socially and culturally similar to themselves.

Status Homogamy

The tendency to select a marriage partner with a similar level of education, achieved status, or cultural capital.

Marriage Gradient

A traditional mate selection pattern where men marry younger women with lower status or education, and women marry older men with higher status or education.